Also, that mission has some serious performance issues. I understand this is a game of the future, where everyona has at least Ryzen, but the whole mission runs like 3-8 FPS for me, CPU melting down... :-/That is next to unplayable.

A fix for the Detriment mission is in the works. The mission has been simplified a bit which is a partial fix. It's also possible that Circuit performance is disproportionately bad on the map in question for some reason, which is a much harder fix.

All mission played on Brutal!In general with these massive missions I tend to have to go for attrition effective things like berthas etc. and abusing the AI by terraforming. Geos you start with cant morph in any missions

Intrepid: Demonstrated the paladin well but made some berthas as well.Difficulty: 4

Mannia: Indeed cant reclaim the massive rocks but this is already the easiest mission anyway. Made one additional detri and a few paladins and they walked through all opposition with little support.Difficulty: 3

Caderical: Last mission I did. I manage to send an early heavy taskforce to take out the enemy zenith but still can't win without terraforming my side, stopping 90% of the enemy units from attacking. The AI never stopped making tanks and paladins so by the end he had flooded his side utterly in heavy units he didnt know how to use. Won by combination of starlight and trinity..Difficulty: 8

Zhurou: You might take out an enemy fac and a shogun or two in the beginning but your naval is doomed. hurry up and finish Disco, build protector and terraform your island. Scout enemy and annihilate their berthas with disco. Get AA, a trinity and win. Took a long time to find the singus in the island lakes though.Difficulty: 6

Cipher: This is allll about memorizing from previous attempts where the enemy has got his valuables and snipe as much crap as you can once the starlight is done but often you'll need to take down the enemy detri once it comes close, which is often early. Your gollis and paladins can raid the enemy as soon as the starlight is done and can support. Even so I only won after SOME terraform and porcing. Starter nanolathes dont do anything until set to patrol. One singu and one mex isnt connected to grid.Difficulty: 8

Thanks a lot Kingstad for your feedback throughout the campaign, I'll fix the grid on Cipher and look into the geo issue. I'm guessing you played Mannia after the rework, I prioritised making it not lag over making it super difficult.

This wasn't too difficult a mission for me. Sure, the enemy was breaking through some of my team's defensive lines, but my striders took care of them without problems. Moreover, while the enemy was besieging us with Big Berthas and Merlins, they did little to slow my striders' advance. (I had Merlins of my own laying siege to the enemy's front lines in return.)

As for the Paladins, not only did they break through enemy lines with the help of Funnelwebs and Scorpions, but they went on a rampage deep within enemy territory. In fact, I don't think I ever lost a single Paladin during this mission. Plus I beat it in under 20 minutes, which is more than 10 minutes earlier than the seemingly-generous 30-minute timer for the bonus objective. (I'd compare my experiences with this mission with that of Sirlanna, where groups of Grizzlies quickly advanced through enemy territory almost non-stop.)

I had considered building a Trinity in this mission, but after sending some Owls on suicidal reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines, and seeing how many enemy Antinukes were present, I decided that it was pointless to do so. Big Berthas weren't under consideration at all, since I was doing more damage to the enemy with my Striders.

Likewise, not too difficult a mission, though since the enemy was deploying strike forces consisting of multiple Paladins, Funnelwebs, Dantes, and Scorpions, this was a bit more difficult than Intrepid. Early in the match, one such strike force took out my ally's base on the central-eastern part of the map, including the Antinuke positioned there, forcing me to divert some of my striders towards repelling that strike force. Had it not been for my only Detriment's successful assault on the enemy Trinity to the south, my team would've probably been in even bigger trouble than what we had to deal with.

In order to keep myself from losing any Detriments, and in order to better deal with enemy Paladins and Shoguns, I decided to focus on building assault forces of Paladins supported by Scorpions, Merlins, and Funnelwebs, just like in Intrepid. Moreover, I sent my Detriment for repairs when its health dipped below half health.

One thing that I learned to watch out for is that the enemy Big Berthas will prioritize shooting at the Detriment's location, even while inside my ally's central western base. Because of this, I tried masking the Detriment's radar signal with an Iris, which worked.

Overall, this match took a bit longer than Intrepid, but I was able to finish it in less than 25 minutes.

In order to solidify my control over the seas in the early game, I decided to focus on producing Seawolves, since they're not only fast enough to be able to quickly respond to and intercept emerging threats (including Grizzlies, Shoguns, and Reefs), but they're largely invulnerable to anything that lacks anti-sub capabilities, whilst also having anti-sub capabilities of their own. In fact, since I was mostly controlling smaller units for this mission, it was a refreshing change of pace after having to mostly use striders in most of my previous missions over the last couple of days.

Anyways, since I was warned that I didn't have an antinuke, which implies that the enemy has a Trinity, I decided to build one before finishing the Disco Rave Party. For my starting factory, I opted for an Airplane Plant, so that I could scout the enemy's base with suicidal Owls. Surprisingly enough, some of the Owls managed to survive long enough to still be alive while at the back of the enemy base, which seems to indicate that enemy anti-air capabilities were lacking, especially in the rear. Regardless, I took advantage of the situation, and ordered my Disco Rave Party to start bombarding important enemy infrastructure (mostly factories and strider hubs).

After I finished my Disco Rave Party, my next plan was to assault the enemy's base with Paladins, Detriments, and Funnelwebs. I'm glad to have built them too, as for some reason, the enemy was sending Detriments against me, requiring me to divert my resources to intercepting them. The 1st enemy Detriment attacked my northwestern wall, completely trashing it, but thankfully, it was brought down before it could reach my Disco Rave Party. The 2nd Detriment spawned in the southeast, but thankfully, was intercepted and destroyed before it could break through my southeastern wall. Since I didn't spot any strider hubs, I have reason to believe that the Detriments were spawned via scripting.

Anyways, when I sent my striders forward to assault the enemy base, the enemy tried to fire a nuke at it. While this didn't kill any of my striders, it destroyed the land bridge that connected our islands together, forcing me to use an Athena to build a Djinn to teleport more striders across the bridge.

Because the enemy's defenses were so lackluster (partially due to being softened up by my Disco Rave Party), my striders were able to clean up the enemy base without problems... except that the enemy had a couple Singularity Reactors that were sneakily buried underwater to the southern edge, out of line-of-sight of my striders. However, one of my Detriments could shoot at them once it got right next to them.

Overall, a pretty nice mission that I managed to finish in less than 25 minutes. As for killing 3 enemy Shoguns within 5 minutes, my Seawolf armada managed to do so in about 3 minutes.

As daunting as it might seem at 1st to have to face against an enemy superweapon that's out of range of your own superweapon, it really wasn't too difficult for me to deal with quickly, since I could opt to sneak in some Scythes to destroy the enemy Zenith (just as I did to destroy the Big Bertha on Thibella), so long as I micromanaged them so that they avoid getting detected. Luckily, I started with a Cloakbot Factory.

As for taking care of the enemy Paladins, I opted to focus on building Phantoms and Krows to counter them, since they both pack a serious punch that can devastate even striders. (Note that Krows are at a significant risk of being stunlocked by a Paladin, so I'd recommend bringing multiple Krows.) Although I also started with a Tank and Spider Factory, I didn't think Crabs or even Cyclopses or Widows would be a good counter against Paladins. Also, as tempting as it might've been to swarm Paladins with Fleas, I'm afraid that the enemy would escort its Paladins with units with anti-swarm capabilities.

That was my plan, though somehow, my starting forces were able to destroy the 1st Paladin on their own. However, the enemy had beaten down most of my starting forces, while reinforcements were slow, so I decided to finish off the 2nd Paladin with my Zenith.

Once the enemy Zenith and Paladins were defeated, I had free reign to gradually push back the enemy forces with my Phantoms, Catapults, and Krows, and reclaim all the countless space rocks that my Zenith, along with the enemy's Zenith, dumped onto the battlefield. Since the enemy had an Artemis at their base, I couldn't use the Krows to go on a rampage inside the enemy's base, which left the task of assaulting the enemy base to my Phantoms and Catapults. (I also switched production from Krows to Catapults.) However, I had to keep one of the enemy's Singularity Reactors alive until my Commander finished building a 2nd superweapon to complete my objective (assisted by dozens of constructors that I had built for reclaiming purposes). In the meantime, I had a few Krows, and the Zenith, on standby in case the enemy sent more striders my way.

Although I didn't have to wait for long to bring my Starlight online, and although taking out the Disco Rave Party with it shouldn't be a problem, what took me so long to finally spot the Disco Rave Party was because the enemy had so much anti-air that my 1st 2 waves of suicidal Owls couldn't penetrate deep enough into the enemy base to spot it before they went down. It took a flyby from some afterburning Swifts to finally reveal its location.

Until I could finally take out the enemy superweapon, I decided that I would build up a force of Funnelwebs to make a push towards the enemy's base, escorted by Lances to efficiently take out any enemy striders that they encounter. However, the Starlight ended up taking out most, if not all, of the enemy striders, along with other targets of opportunity, like Geothermals, Lucifers, Desolators, Artemis, and Chainsaws. (Sometimes, I let the Starlight pick its own targets, though it sometimes hit my own units in the process.)

Overall, not too bad. Controlling the Starlight, and using it to destroy striders in mere seconds, felt like controlling the laser drill from the "StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty" mission "The Dig". Although the mission felt long, I managed to finish it within 22 minutes. Moreover, although parts of my defensive line were open to the enemy after being bombarded by their Merlins and Disco Rave Party, thankfully, my mex count never dropped below 25.

And with that, I've gone through every mission in the game, and unlocked every technology. However, I've yet to finish every bonus objective, and I'm not sure if I'll pursue them or not.

+1 / -0

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